The Full Biography
Jim Carrey. Actor. The Newmarket kid who made a face into a 1990s climate, then spent the next decades trying to put the face down and find out what a man looks like without it.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a green mask, or a loud cop, or Truman Burbank waking up inside a television show. What the still cannot show is James Eugene Carrey of Newmarket, Ontario, a family that lost a house and lived in a van, a sketch shop called In Living Color, a year no comic had stacked like 1994, a depression he has named, and a man still working when the part is a part and not a rubber face only.
He was born on January 17, 1962, in Newmarket, north of Toronto, to Percy Carrey, an accountant and jazz saxophonist, and Kathleen, a homemaker. Three older siblings. The household was Catholic and comic and then, suddenly, poor. Percy lost the accounting job. The family lived in a van for a stretch and worked as janitors and security at the Titan Wheels factory in Scarborough. Jim, still a teenager, mopped floors after a full day of school. He has told those years as the first stage, not as a press-kit wound. Comedy clubs were the second. Yuk Yuk’s in Toronto. A move to Los Angeles. Rodney Dangerfield’s club. Auditions that treated the elastic face as a novelty and then as a problem. He was, for a long stretch, a Canadian kid in a town that already had enough faces.
The door was television, not a feature. After a failed sitcom, The Duck Factory (1984), and a few small pictures including Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), Keenen Ivory Wayans put him on In Living Color in 1990. Fire Marshal Bill. Vera de Milo. A white man in a Black sketch show who treated the body as a cartoon the network had not ordered. Four seasons. The shop taught him a camera and a clock. Stand-up had taught him a room. The two together made 1994 possible.
Then the year. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, released in February, made a talking-butt detective into a box-office fact. The Mask, in July, put him in green CGI as Stanley Ipkiss, a bank clerk who becomes a id the city cannot contain. Dumb and Dumber, in December, opposite Jeff Daniels, is a road picture that is also a dare about how stupid a star is willing to look. Three hits. One calendar. No comic had stacked an American year like that in that town. He was thirty-two. He was, overnight, a climate.
He did not stop to become a residency of himself. Batman Forever (1995) made him the Riddler for Joel Schumacher, a neon villain in a picture that wanted toys. Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995) took the detective to Africa and the same money. In 1996 The Cable Guy, for Ben Stiller, paid him twenty million dollars — a landmark for a comic lead — and asked him to be dark. Audiences who had bought the mask did not all want the dark. He did not apologize. Liar Liar (1997) put him back in a courtroom as a lawyer who cannot lie for twenty-four hours, a high-concept that is also a father story. It was a smash. The town decided he could do both temperatures.
The Truman Show (1998), for Peter Weir, is the first monument that is not only a face. Truman Burbank, born on television, living in a dome, walking toward a door in the painted sky. Carrey played the sweetness first and the rage second. The Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama sat on that performance. The Academy did not nominate him. The omission became a joke he did not love and did not bother to correct. Man on the Moon (1999), as Andy Kaufman, is a disappearing act: he stayed in character on the set, a method the documentary Jim & Andy (2017) would unspool years after. Another Golden Globe. Another Oscar silence. He was, for a stretch, the most complete physical clown American pictures had hired since the silent men, and the first one the serious pictures would take without a rubber nose.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), for Ron Howard, is a makeup job and a box-office mountain. The Majestic (2001) tried a Capra amnesia and did not take. Bruce Almighty (2003) made him a man who is briefly God, opposite Morgan Freeman, a smash that is also a theology joke. Then Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), for Michel Gondry, from Charlie Kaufman’s script: Joel Barish, a man who pays to have a woman erased and then fights the erasure from inside his own head. Kate Winslet is Clementine. The face is put down on purpose. It is the performance a lot of people who disliked the mask still carry. He was nominated for a Golden Globe. The Academy, again, stayed home.
Between those two temperatures he kept taking the jobs that used the instrument. Me, Myself & Irene (2000) with the Farrelly brothers put him back in a split-personality farce opposite Renée Zellweger. Simon Birch had already given him a cameo as an adult narrator. He produced. He wrote. He had, as a struggling comic, written himself a ten-million-dollar check “for acting services rendered” and postdated it; when the 1990s paid him more than that, the story became a parable he did not have to invent. Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004) made him Count Olaf, a villain in makeup children still know. Fun with Dick and Jane would wait a year. The point of the mid-2000s is not a decline. It is a star who had already been a climate, looking for a part that was a part.
I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.Jim Carrey
The turn is Truman and the naming of the weather in the head. A lot of 1990s faces became residencies of themselves. He became a man who paints, who talks about the void, who still takes a part when the part is a part. He has been, in interviews, blunt about depression. That bluntness is more interesting than a twelfth mask.
Six things most people never knew
- The van years are a first stage, not a spice. Newmarket. A house lost. The face sits on a boy who had already performed survival.
- In Living Color is the door, not Ace only. A sketch shop. The 1994 pile sits on that shop.
- 1994 is a typo that is real. Three pictures. A climate. No comic had stacked a year like that in that town.
- The Truman Show is the first monument that is not only rubber. 1998. A man in a bubble. A Golden Globe. No Oscar nomination.
- Eternal Sunshine is the man with the face put down. 2004. Gondry. A grief. The part a lot of skeptics still accept.
- He has named the depression. The interviews are a file, not a brand of fragility. The painting is a second room.
The household has included two marriages that ended — Melissa Womer, the waitress he met in the stand-up years, mother of his daughter Jane; and Lauren Holly, his Dumb and Dumber co-star — and a long public relationship with Jenny McCarthy that ended in 2010. Jane is the private constant. Friends from the 1990s sets describe a professional who was first on the lot and harder on himself than a director. The Carrey in a gallery is the same hardness without a mask.
The later years
Home, after the 1994 climate, has been Los Angeles and a set of rooms he treats as a studio: canvases, a memoir in pictures, a public life that is part stand-up residual and part philosophy seminar. He did not vanish when the rubber-face market cooled. He chose. Fun with Dick and Jane (2005) was a paycheck comedy about a couple who turn to crime. The Number 23 (2007) was a numerology thriller he believed in more than the town did. Yes Man (2008) put him back in a high-concept opposite Zooey Deschanel. I Love You Phillip Morris (2009), as the con man Steven Russell, is a performance the marketing department did not know how to sell and a reminder that he can still disappear. A Christmas Carol (2009) for Robert Zemeckis motion-captured him as Scrooge. Mr. Popper’s Penguins (2011) was a family picture. He took the work that used the instrument while the instrument still answered, and he took the work that asked him to put the instrument down.
Television became a second parish. Kidding (2018–2020), for Showtime, created by Dave Holstein and directed in part by Gondry, made him Jeff Piccirillo, a children’s-show host whose life is falling apart in adult rooms. Two seasons. A Golden Globe nomination. It is the closest the 2010s came to another Truman: a man whose job is to be gentle on camera while the off-camera file will not stay gentle. He also returned to the mask the culture still wants. Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022), and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) made him Dr. Ivo Robotnik, a villain children now know who were not born when Ace Ventura was a climate. He has said the Robotnik pictures are a kind of play. He has also said he does not need another one. Both sentences can be true.
Between Kidding and the hedgehog he kept the other room open. He exhibited paintings in Los Angeles and in New York. He made political drawings that newspapers ran because a 1994 face drawing a senator is a story even when the drawing is the work. He sat for Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (2017), the Netflix film that unspooled the Kaufman set. He wrote the novel. He has, in interviews across those years, been blunt about wanting to stop being Jim Carrey the product. He has not always stopped. The Sonic checks and the gallery nights are the same man in two rooms. Newmarket is still the first room. The van is still in the sentence.
The other room is the one without a call sheet. He paints. Large, political, sometimes savage canvases that have hung in galleries and been sold for real money. He published Memoirs and Misinformation (2020), a novel written with Dana Vachon that treats a famous life as a fever. He sat for documentaries. He has spoken, without a publicist’s sanding, about depression, about the death of former girlfriend Cathriona White in 2015 and the legal weather that followed, about the emptiness that fame does not fill. He lives, when he can arrange it, as a man who has already been a product and is now trying to be a person in public. That is harder than a green face. He is in his sixties. Newmarket is the first room. The bubble is the monument. The quiet is the work he is still doing. Jane, his daughter, is the private constant. The marriages ended. The van did not leave the sentence.
He has not retired. He has thinned the calendar on purpose. The Sonic pictures and the occasional voice job are the jobs that still use the clown. Kidding and the canvases are the jobs that use the man. A lot of 1990s comics became residencies and then farewell tours. He became a painter who will still put on the teeth if the part is a part. The van is still in the sentence. The three-picture year is still in the sentence. The depression is in the sentence. All three are him. None is the whole throat.
The house, when he can arrange it, is a studio more than a shrine. Canvases on the floor. A novel on the table. A daughter on the phone. He has said the famous check, the three pictures, the bubble, and the erasure are all true and none of them is a life. He still takes Robotnik because children laugh and the check is real. He still paints because the face, put down, has to go somewhere. That is the chapter in progress. Newmarket is still the first room. The mop at Titan Wheels is still in the file. The green mask is a clip. The man without it is the work he is still doing.
After the spotlight moved
It moved to the next face and then came back every time a comic wanted to be taken seriously. 1994 is the climate. Truman is the correction. Eternal Sunshine is the grief. The van is the first stage. The depression is named. The paintings are the second room. Children who will never see In Living Color know Robotnik. That is a strange remainder and a real one.
He came out of Newmarket, lived in a van, stacked a year, stepped into a bubble, put the face down, named the weather, and still takes a mark. If you only remember the mask, you have the still. If you remember the van, Truman, and the sentence about fame not being the answer, you have him.
Portrait: Georges Biard · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons